Edinburgh Wedding Photography:600,000 Views for One Wedding Image

Last week, I had the pleasure of photographing Emily and Ryan’s wedding at Edinburgh Zoo. As well as the usual more formal images, the guys wanted to capture some images that encapsulated the feel of the day and, having got married at the zoo, it seemed only right to try to get a few images with some of the animals. A recce beforehand had shown me that this was going to be a bit more tricky than at first envisaged, as the layout of the various cages and pens didn’t lend themselves to include a photograph of the bride & groom. But needs must…

I felt the best opportunity to capture such an image was to look for an enclosure where I could locate myself at one side of the enclosure and place Emily & Ryan on the other side with the animals in the middle, and the meerkat enclosure seemed to fit the bill more than most. Of course, there’s a huge element of luck involved here, as a meerkat stood up at exactly the time and place that I wished for. Having set up the shot already, I quickly refocused and grabbed the shot you see below. I shared this image on my Facebook page last week and Ryan then reposted it to one of the more popular content sharing sites where the image has received over 600,000 views to date (617,000 to be precise). Whilst most of the comments are very favourable, there were a few suggesting that the image was “faked” and that the couple were “out of focus”, so I thought this would be a good place to set the record straight. First of all, yes, Emily & Ryan are out of focus in the shot, but that is the intention. The thought process behind the image was to have the focus on the animal, with the couple in the background, but with it still being quite obvious that they are on their wedding day which I believe I’ve achieved. Secondly, the image is in no way “faked”. Of course you could create this image using composite images in Photoshop but there would be no point as it wouldn’t reflect what actually happened on the day. Sure, there is a huge slice of luck involved but, as they say…he who dares!